Give Me Something Definite
by PrizJefra
Summary: Warning: fluffiness, romance, and the Captain's shenanigans ahead. Jack goes out to find the Doctor with a bottle of apple cider in one hand and his most dashing smile on his face. What happens between them that makes him forget all about the apple cider? Why, after a merry time of drinking with Martha, do his lips become covered in the Doctor's tears? Read on and find out.


"Doctor!"

Jack put on his brightest and most dashing smile, not without some effort. It didn't really matter, he knew. The Doctor currently had his back turned to him as he toyed with some silly little device or another. Jack usually didn't mind having the Doctor turn his back to him (it presented him with a rather spectacular view) but he'd be stupid not to notice the deeper implications to it. All the same, the mere sight of the Doctor, both the front and the back, was cause for celebration. He stumbled forward a few steps, not really tipsy but lovesick (though he sometimes tried to deny the latter.)

"You've been tinkering around with that thing for hours. Come inside, have a cold drink or somethin'." The Doctor's only form of response was to spit out a metal bolt which he had been holding between his teeth as he examined his little toy. If Jack was surprised to see the bolt sprout legs and scuttle away into the night he didn't show it. He followed the silvery path that it had made in the bowed grass with his eyes, imagining the look on the Doctor's face. He could see it perfectly: one eyebrow raised slightly higher than the other, lips parted around a silent scientific mutter, brown eyes glinting with fascination and curiosity (one eye was heavier lidded than the other, a trait that he found absolutely charming) behind thin glasses. He stumbled closer, yearning for the moment when the Doctor would turn and grace him with a view of that heavenly face.

"Sorry, Jack. Can't," the Doctor said in a distant voice. The metal tool hissed and spat out a thousand tiny sparks that also grew legs and scuttled away in the grass. Jack was careful to step over them as he moved towards the Doctor. In his hand he held a silver tray bearing two small glasses and a bottle of apple cider. He stood just close enough to the Doctor and offered him the glass without any alcohol in it. The Doctor sighed gratefully.

"Let me guess," Jack said sarcastically as the Doctor downed his drink in a single toss of the head, "That little toy you've got there will decide the fate of some tiny, obscure planet out near, I don't know, Mars or somethin'?"

"How did you know?" The Doctor looked up at him in surprise. For a moment Jack simply stared at him in disbelief. To think that this was the man that had saved a countless number of lives and won a million smiles from a thousand lost souls. _You know, for a genius you're quite naive_, he wanted desperately to say but he held his tongue.

"Lucky guess," he said flatly. The two stared at each other a moment longer before turning away at the same time. Jack took a hurried swig at the apple cider to mask his embarrassment as the Doctor continued to go about his work. He thanked the stars above that they weren't shining so bright lest they revealed to the Doctor the shy, pink love that spread across his otherwise pale cheeks. It took a very special being to make Jack blush and so far there had only been one.

A slow silence descended upon them as each man wandered into his own confused thoughts. Jack would give up his five star good looks just to know what the Doctor was thinking. Long ago, he used to believe that the Doctor was only a man of science: emotionless, powerful, and quite attractive. But he knew better. Fate had been cruel enough to let him glimpse the Doctor's heart on a few rare occasions and what he saw there made him yearn to pull the Doctor close, lull him into a soft, ignorant sleep, and lose himself in the painless rhythm of his double heart beats.

But that would never happen, he knew. He loved the Doctor like he had never loved before but it seemed that, as of late, the Doctor was becoming less inclined to look him in the eye. Implicit jokes, whispered words of appreciation, desirous glances - never were they aimed so blatantly at the Doctor. Rather, they were born in the secretly desperate hope that he would respond. Even a fatigued, 'Now's not the time, Jack' would do but he hadn't even gotten that. They hadn't had a real conversation in days. But Jack would be damned if he went to sleep that night not knowing what had wedged itself between them. The silvery grey grass of the ever-expanding field shivered in the cool midnight air. Behind them the TARDIS sat silent, watchful, and full of life. Before them the ground dropped off into a sudden blackness that ended in a rocky desert of forgotten bones dashed against the jagged boulders of a long since dried river.

He could see himself jumping off of that cliff. Really, what was the use of living if the most wonderful being in the universe always had his back to him?

Too bad he just couldn't die.

"So how was your date with, er, Shsthrulia, was it?" Jack snapped out of his reverie and looked at the Doctor. He shouldn't have been surprised that the Doctor would remember something as trivial as his date with a woman with seven pairs of eyes in unlikely places.

"To tell you the truth, Doctor, I think she was more into me than I was into her."

"Oh?" he stuck the tool in his mouth (a million scenarios popped into Jack's head) and turned a pair of highly suspicious eyes on him. "Come on, there has to be more to it than _that_."

"Alright," Jack smiled and shifted his weight onto one foot. He really didn't want the Doctor to inquire any further but, hey, if it meant that he would get more time to spend with him then he would reveal his very soul to him. He looked down at the ground beneath his feet. "She might have gotten the impression that I wasn't really into it."

"Really?" the tool began to shudder between the Doctor's teeth. The man was quick to spit it out before it unhinged a set of impressive looking pincers that snapped aggressively at his fingers.

"Well," _stop talking, Jack, stop talking_.But his faithless lips wouldn't remain shut. He looked up at the moon, hoping to find some sort of distraction there but it remained silent and watchful, maybe even judgmental in all of its ethereal beauty, "sometimes I think that they all get that feeling in the end."

"There's someone else on your mind?"

"Hmm," _amen to tha_t, _Jack_ thought. The moon continued to glare at him.

"Your first love?"

"What would you know about 'first love', Doctor?" He meant it as a joke but when he turned to look at the Doctor his face was dead set perhaps, he thought, a little darker than usual. Yet again that could have just been his paranoia. He allowed a minute of silence to drift past them before finally finding the courage to speak again. He cleared his throat and began to kick at a tuft of dirt with his otherwise flawless boots. The Doctor continued to prod at the hissing tool-turned-creature in his hands. "Not my first love. That was a man who sold me lollipops on the corner of the street when I was twelve. And then there was my twelfth grade teacher. And then there was the waitress on the Planet with No Name, then the three-legged dwarf who enjoyed biting my ankles, and then the scaly woman who often visited me when I was at the beach and then...there was the Man. But he wasn't just a man...he was much more," here Jack looked up and stared at the Doctor through the growing darkness. "I'd met so many people during my pointless travels but he was something special. Wiser than a man who has known what it means to suffer, almost uncomfortably perceptive, thoughtful, adventurous...and I'm pretty sure he has a body much more gracious and developed than that of Michelangelo's David but I wouldn't know thanks to the wonderful invention of clothing," he wasn't sure but he thought he saw the Doctor's hands falter, "point is...he's a wonderful guy. Simply amazing. And I would do anything for him because I," he laughed uncomfortably and rubbed the back of his neck, "I love him, Doctor. I know I do but he has the weight of a thousand worlds on his shoulders. It's funny. It's said that he can bend time but...he just doesn't have time for me."

He quickly turned on his heels and took a few steps away from the Doctor. Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid. He couldn't believe that he had allowed himself to do that but, no matter how hard he tried to force it, he did not regret a single word. It had to be done. It had to be gotten off of his chest. _Who knows_, Jack thought bitterly, _maybe the Doctor's naivety would extend just far enough._ Anyways, the Doctor knew that he was prone to drink. If he woke up in the morning and didn't have the balls to live up to his confession then he would blame his words on the fact that he and Martha had been engaged in a drinking game only a few minutes before he had left the TARDIS in search of the Doctor. He laughed a mirthless laugh that dispersed, white and frolicking, in the air before him. "It's getting late," he said to the distant TARDIS, "you should head inside. God forbid the moonlight gives _you _a tan, Doctor. Actually, I might like that." He began to walk away but a single word, like a gunshot through the heart, made him freeze in his tracks.

"Jack..." He turned slowly to face the Doctor. The metal creature had finally managed to scurry away and now the Doctor's hands lay limp at his sides. The glasses had been taken off and the raw look of distress that the Doctor gave him made him seem almost pathetic and helpless for the first time since Jack had known him. He lowered his chin and spoke in an uncomfortably serious voice. "He's a lucky man to have caught the affections of someone like you. Maybe even a little underserving. Oi! I'm serious!" he said in response to Jack's look of utter amusement, "You know, Jack..." he stuffed his hands in the pockets of his tan overcoat and began to walk towards him, his every step sending nervous excitations through Jack's body, "maybe he does feel the same. Maybe he spends his nights dreading every date, every 'outing' hoping against hope that this won't be the one that will take you away from him. Maybe he watches you from a distance, cherishing your every smile, waiting to hear your every sincere word. Maybe he's scared to tell you that he loves you because everyone that he's ever loved has gone." The Doctor was close now, very close. Jack could see himself reflected in the wise brown eyes. "Maybe," he said softly, his breath dancing upon Jack's lips, "he hasn't spoken to you for days on end because he fears that his next words may be the ones that will send you away forever. Jack..." the Doctor closed his eyes against a threatening onslaught of tears. When he spoke again his voice was nothing more than a frightened whisper, "maybe he just cannot have that."

Jack was going to pull him close. He was going to prove to him just how much he loved him using only his lips and the most love-sick promises but before he could rouse himself from his shocked paralysis Martha threw open the doors to the TARDSI and stomped out.

"'Bring him back in,' that's what you said. Does it really take thirty minutes to 'bring him back in'? I didn't want him to fetch a cold again but now it looks like you're both going to get sick, standing out here like...I don't know...things that stand out in the cold all day. Penguins! That's what you two look like! PENGUINS! And shocked ones at that. What happened?" she said, looking between the two men with suspicion. They were standing so close to each other, it looked like they were about to fight, "Is everything alright?" She gasped and looked at the Doctor whose tears were obscured by the darkness of the night, "Did Jack do the_ thing _with the TARDIS's controls again-"

"Martha," Jack said, low and impatient.

"I _told_ you we have to put our hands on that-"

"_Martha_..."

"That's it, I am never drinking with you agai-"

Jack grabbed the Doctor by his jacket and pulled him close, almost impossibly so. The kiss could barely be described as romantic as the passion that they had waited to indulge in for so long took over with a violent, careless enthusiasm. Martha took one step back, two steps back before finally turning around and walking away as quick as she could. She wouldn't let them see her cry.

"That's not fair," she muttered at the doors of the TARDIS, not daring to watch her heart break behind her. She crept inside and slowly eased the door shut behind her.

The Doctor gasped and pulled back, his eyes shining. Jack laughed and hugged the Doctor even tighter. "Save your breath, we're just getting started," he said, relishing the feel of the Doctor's hands on his shoulder. The Doctor shook his head.

"No, it's not that. The Alpha Santchrum, where did it go?" The Doctor fell to his knees and began to search around in the grass, once again presenting Jack with a rather spectacular view. Jack stuffed his hands in his pockets and began to rock back and forth on his heels.

"Um, excuse me? Doctor? I think we were in the middle of something."

"I know, I know but, like you said, that little rascal can determine the fate of a whole race of beings. Ah-ha!" The Doctor pounced upon the metal creature and held it victoriously in the air. There was that winning smile, that annoyingly pearly perfection that sent Jack's heart thumping. The Doctor stood up and pressed a tiny button on the creature's back. With an indignant 'squeeeeeee' it ceased to wiggle and lay limp in the Doctor's palm. It was interesting to Jack that the Doctor should have spent so much time toying with the machine when all it really took to turn it off was a simple push of a button. Without ever breaking his smile, the Doctor stuffed it in his pocket and pulled Jack into another long kiss.

"Hey," Jack said gently when the Doctor pulled away for the second time, a worried look in his eyes. He picked up the Doctor's hand and kissed it lovingly. "She'll understand. She's tough, you know that. Tougher than me. You should have seen her let loose with the threats and angry stares when we were playing cards earlier." The Doctor thought a moment.

"Maybe you're right,"

"That's a lot of maybes for one man. Even a more-than-a-man man" He couldn't help it. He kissed the Doctor's forehead. "Why don't you try giving me something definite?"

"Alright," the Doctor smiled with his tongue between his teeth, "I am delighted to say that I...love you...Captain Jack Harkness."

"And I love you, Doctor."


End file.
